Tag Archives: Richard

White Hair, Blue Eyes, and Black(ish) Skin: A History of Storm in Comic Book Covers

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Storm is one of Marvel’s most recognizable heroines and the most prominent woman of color in superhero comics (though the definition of “color” varies from artist to artist). She’s never had her own ongoing series, but she’s been a headliner in the X-Men franchise for decades. Since her introduction in 1975, Storm has assumed many roles: mutant, superhero,  African goddess, pickpocket, claustrophobe, knife-fighting enthusiast, team leader, Black Panther’s arm candy, and fetish-fuel for Chris Claremont. This post is a visual summary of how artists portrayed Storm during the past three and a half decades.

1970s

Cover by Dave Cockrum and Irving Watanabe (1977)

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Cover by Dave Cockrum, Terry Austin, and Gaspar Saladino (1979)

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Cover by John Byrne, Terry Austin, and Dan Crespi (1979)

1980s

Cover by Dave Cockrum, Josef Rubinstein, Tom Orzechowski (1981)

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Cover by Bob McLeod (1981)

Are they … scissoring?

Cover by Paul Smith and Bob Wiacek (1983)

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Cover by Paul Smith and Bob Wiacek (1983)

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Cover by John Romita, Jr. and Dan Green (1984)

Great ideas in comics: Storm as a punk rock bitch with a mohawk. 

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Cover by Barry Windsor-Smith (1984)

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Cover by Rick Leonardi and Whilce Portacio (1986)

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Cover by Marc Silvestri, Dan Green, and Alex Jay (1988)

1990s.

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Cover by Andy Kubert and Joe Rosen (1990)

So there was this plot where Storm was turned into a kid … it didn’t make much sense.

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Cover by Jim Lee, Scott Williams, and Tom Orzechowski (1991)

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Cover by Whilce Portacio (1992)

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Cover by Joe Madureira (1995)

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Cover by Terry Dodson and Karl Story (1996)

A four issue mini-series.

Cover by Scott Clark (1997)

2000s

Cover by Andy Kubert (2001)

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Cover by Salvador Larroca (2003)

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Cover by Greg “Pornface” Land (2004)

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Cover by Mike Mayhew (2006)

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Cover by Leinil Francis Yu (2006)

Storm and Black Panther were married in 2006.

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Cover by Alan Davis (2008)

In Wakanda, only men get chairs.

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Cover by David Yardin and Jacob Keith (2009)

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Cover by Phil Jimenez, Frank D’Armata, Travis Charest, and Justin Ponsor (2009)


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Virtual Gay Panic

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For the past few weeks I’ve been playing Dragon Age 2, a “sword n’ sorcery” role-playing game (RPG) produced by Bioware. The game has earned mixed reviews: many critics raved about the decade-spanning story or the improvements made to the combat mechanics of its predecessor. Others complained about the repetitive nature of the quests, the many glitches, and the painful lack of variety in environments. Speaking of which, I must have visited the exact same cavern about 30 times. And I visited the exact same sewer passage about 40 times. And half the game is spent wandering around just one city (it got really fucking tedious is what I’m saying). But for more than a few people, the biggest flaw in Dragon Age 2 isn’t the repetitiveness or the bugs. It’s that the game is kinda gay.

I’ll provide some background: Bioware RPGs almost always include a romantic sub-plot, where the player’s avatar (referred to as the Player Character, or PC) has the option to romance one of his/her traveling companions. In most RPGs, the romantic options are exclusively straight. If the PC is male, he can only romance female companions. If the PC is female … you get the idea. But Bioware has the habit of including at least one gay romantic option, and Dragon Age: Origins included gay options for both men and women. Though it’s important to note that there were also exclusively straight companions who could be wooed only by PC’s of the opposite gender. So there was a little something for everyone (well, not exactly everyone, but certainly a larger demographic than just straight men).

Dragon Age 2 upped the ante by doubling the number of same-sex romantic possibilities, and in the process eliminated the exclusively straight romantic option. There are four companions, two male and two female, that a PC of either gender can woo (as a side note, your PC always has the last name of Hawke). So is this a universe filled with bisexuals? Possibly, but only one of the companions (the pirate wench, Isabela) makes comments that clearly establish her bisexuality. The other characters do not discuss their sexuality without reference to Hawke, which means that the player effectively determines their sexual orientation when he/she selects a gender for their PC. As an example, the male companion named Anders only expresses homoerotic desire if Hawke is male, but he shows no interest in men if Hawke is female.

A few fans have referred to this feature as “subjective sexuality,” meaning the sexual orientation of supporting characters is not fixed, but dependent on the player’s choices. This goes beyond the simple empowerment fantasy of most adventure games, and actually brings gaming closer to fan fiction (or slash-fic, in this case). Like a fan-fic author, the player is crafting the story and the romance to their liking, but unlike fan-fic, the in-game romances are actually “canon.” As an approaching to virtual romance, subjective sexuality is quite inclusive.

Perhaps a little too inclusive for some people’s tastes. But I’ll let Captain Cornhole at the Bioware Social Network speak for himself in a thread titled “Straight romances got screwed, no pun intended.”

“No seriously for those of us who like straight romaces [sic] we all got screwed over big time. Before I go any further let me clarify this is not a condemnation of homosexuality or bisexuality by any means.

Now sure your Hawke is female you can romance Anders or what have you, but it isn’t a truely straight romance. Every romance option is bi, and it’s just not the same knowing Anders or Fenris will flirt with male Hawke just as much.

Bottomline it is disgusting and I’m a tad upset there is not a single straight person in the game, and frankly there isn’t anyone that I want to romance because of it. It’s a shame really.”

Even more outraged was the commenter named Bastal, who posted a Unibomber-quality manifesto in the thread titled “Bioware Neglected Their Main Demographic: The Straight Male Gamer.” You can probably guess the gist of his complaint. These comments were not isolated incidents, and they attracted the attention of the gaming press, and eventually elicited several responses from Bioware staff.

David Gaider, one of the Lead Writers of the Dragon Age franchise, responded to the Cornhole’s comment (with far more politeness than was deserved):

“… [I]f the concern is you might accidentally be exposed to an unwelcome sexual advance– oh well. One would hope you’d deal with it in the same mature manner you’d do so in real life …

Fenris and Merrill [two other potential love interests] don’t initiate a romance with any gender, and really their sexuality is the most subjective since they don’t discuss it. Regardless, why someone would be concerned about what other people might do in their playthroughs is difficult to say. If the idea that a character might be having hypothetical sex with someone of the same gender in an alternate dimension bothers you, then by all means don’t continue with their romance. That’s why they’re optional.”

It’s tempting to just dismiss this fanboy whining as homophobia and be done with it. But there’s another facet to these types of complaints besides the usual “gays are icky,” and Gaider’s response doesn’t quite address it. This facet is not about a fear of queerness in itself, but a fear that there is nothing else. It’s a discomfort that was inadvertently expressed by one of my friends (they shall remain nameless) who also played Dragon Age 2. Like the commenters at the Bioware Network, he was unhappy that the  male traveling companions (and several other male supporting characters) flirted with him. I responded by noting that he didn’t have to flirt back, but it wasn’t so much the flirting that bothered him but the absence of relationships with men where flirting didn’t occur. He wanted un-erotic relationships with other men, in other words, straight male friendships. At that moment, part of me agreed with him. While I don’t presume to speak for all straight men, there’s something comfortable about my friendships with other straight men, when sex (at least on a conscious level) is out of the question. What my friend wanted, and what I suspect many other straight male gamers also want, is the virtual version of these “safe” friendships.

But this safety relies upon the rejection of a romantic possibility. There are endless opportunities for romance or non-romance in the real world, and my decisions have no effect on the options of the vast majority of humankind. But the virtual world of Dragon Age is finite. There are only so many characters and only so many romantic possibilities. When I start insisting that certain sexual identities become fixed so that those friendships feel safer for me, what I’m also saying is that a romantic option for a gay man (or for a woman who enjoys the fantasy of being a gay man) cannot exist. And in the balance of who’s gaining or losing, I’d say that losing the easygoing quality to a friendship with a nonexistent person is a very, very small price to pay so that someone else can have the same freedom that I possess when creating their ideal fantasy.

Or it might be possible, in theory, to create their ideal fantasy if less of the game took place in that one goddamn cavern … I’ll stop harping on that now.

This Blog Has Improved by 13.6%

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Around the end of the 19th century, Progressives celebrated the dawn of rational government. Public policy was to become a social science, and like all sciences it was to be based on quantitative facts. Every aspect of humanity and all possible outcomes would be assigned a numerical value, and then these numbers could be crunched into a thousand equations that would give us perfect governance. No more trial-and-error, no more dishonesty, no more messy emotions getting in the way of sound policy. It was salvation through statistics.

The faith in scientific government may seem absurd today, but much of our public policy is still built around the statistics game. Partly, this is because quantitative measures are generally easy to analyze and explain. If the police report that crime rates rose by 5%, we all understand what that means, and we can draw general conclusions on how to respond. Plus, statistics just seem so damn rational and authoritative, not like those touchy-feely qualitative observations. Decision-makers, bureaucrats, and the public all crave certainty, or at least a close facsimile.

But numbers can be wrong. Or to be more precise, people are lying liars who make up numbers to “prove” whatever they want to prove. In “The Wire,” the public institutions of Baltimore are constantly “juking the stats,” a term referring to various methods by which they falsify statistical data to show progress where there is none, all while the city continues to crumble around them.

While the series creators have plenty of bile for every aspect of Baltimore’s government, none of the institutions are criticized as thoroughly as the Police Department. The Department is portrayed as the apotheosis of public sector dysfunction, and juking the stats is hardwired into its institutional DNA. On several occasions, Commissioner Burrell alters statistical data so as to gloss over the embarrassingly high rates of violent crime. The simplest way that police departments juke the stats is by re-classifying reported crimes as less serious offenses (as an example, aggravated assaults become assaults). The only crime that can’t be downgraded in this manner is homicide, for obvious reasons. This was why Burrell and Rawls were obsessed with the “clearance rate” (the number of murders solved), and homicide detectives concerned about their clearance numbers looked for ways to avoid investigating a (potentially unsolvable) murder, such as by dumping the bodies on another jurisdiction (as with the bodies of the dead prostitutes in season 2).

Baltimore’s school system does not escape scrutiny either, especially during season 4. The public schools are dependent on federal funding,  and juking the stats is necessary to show improvement on the standardized tests administered under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (there are unpleasant consequences for a school and its faculty should their students repeatedly under-perform on the tests). As shown on “The Wire,” one common method of improving the scores is to teach to the test. Students are given rote lessons on how to answer specific questions. This can lead to modest improvements in aggregate test scores, but the students are not really learning anything except how to take a test, and so the scores do not accurately measure the students’ mastery of basic academic skills.

For both the police and the schools, much of the problem arises from a conflict of interest: the institutions responsible for reporting the stats are the same institutions that will be judged on them. Few people are willing to admit failure, especially when the consequences include losing your job. Thus, Police Commissioners have every incentive to paint a rosy picture of the city’s crime rates. Nor does auditing by an outside agency solve the problem. An agency tasked with analyzing statistics from the police department would still be dependent on the department for crime data, which means they would likely get the same juked stats. The only alternative would be an independent means of detecting crimes and collating the data, which would be prohibitively expensive, especially for a cash-strapped city such as Baltimore.

Statistics were supposed to give us scientific government, one where the ideal public policy would be crafted in accordance with hard data. This was implausible even in the best case scenario, but when data is falsified, statistics actually grant further authority to the lies of public officials. And without trustworthy stats, how is the public supposed to the judge the performance of public institutions? How are voters supposed to hold their elected officials accountable when we can’t be sure if their policies succeeded or failed miserably?

“The Wire” doesn’t offer any solutions to this dilemma. Rather, it suggests that the nature of our political system, particularly the never-ending electoral cycle, creates irresistible incentives to lie. Mayor Carcetti, for example, initially forces Burrell to resign when he lies one too many times about the crime rates. But when Carcetti begins his gubernatorial campaign, his staff pressures incoming Commissioner Daniels to juke the stats so that Carcetti can claim that crime rates fell during his term as mayor. When Daniels refuses to compromise his morals any further, he’s forced out of office and replaced with a more compliant lackey. The public, by and large, is ignorant of the mayor’s deceit, because the city government controls most of the data collection and analysis.

So how should the public deal with juked stats? One alternative would be to provide more resources to non-governmental organizations that compile and analyze their own data, but NGOs have their own agendas and are equally capable of lying. Or we could abandon our stat-based approach to public policy entirely, and rely more on qualitative observations, such as in-depth news articles. For many reasons, this is highly unlikely to happen, but even if it did, qualitative accounts can also be fraudulent, and they are more often anecdotal rather than reflective of larger social trends.

I was hoping to end my post on an upbeat note. But this is a roundtable on “The Wire,” so maybe it’s appropriate that I throw my hands up in frustration.

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Update by Noah: The entire Wire Roundtable is here.

War, what is it good for?

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Blazing Combat
Editor and Writer: Archie Goodwin
Original Publisher: Warren Publishing (1965-66)
Re-published by Fantagraphics Books

Blazing Combat was a war anthology edited and written by Archie Goodwin in collaboration with a dozen artists. It was also a commercial flop back in the sixties, getting canceled after only four issues. According to its publisher, James Warren, the tepid sales were due to politics. The book earned the ire of comic distributors (many of whom were veterans) for its perceived anti-war bias and they refused to sell it. It was outright banned from stores on military bases, meaning that active servicemen (who made up a sizable share of the market for war comics) could not buy it.

But authoritarian politics and government censorship are no match for comic book nostalgia. Decades later, Blazing Combat was resurrected by Fantagraphics, and it’s not hard to see why. Forget the stories or the politics; the list of artists who worked on this title is an aging fanboy’s wet dream. Frank Frazetta (on covers), Wally Wood, John Severin, Alex Toth, Gene Colan. And these artists brought their “A” game. As mainstream comic art goes, few books look as good as Blazing Combat.

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Editorial Cartoons: Four Reactions to the Egyptian Protests

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Like everyone else in the rest of the world, I’ve been following the momentous events occurring in Egypt. But reading all the articles, editorials, analyses, and blog posts is a lot of work. Fortunately, there are editorial cartoons, an ancient medium dedicated to providing news to the illiterate and the very lazy.

Editorial cartoons lack the space for any nuanced commentary, so instead they impart a simple message that elicits an immediate emotional response from the reader. Of course, that response can vary depending upon the biases and assumptions of both the artist and the audience. After reviewing all the cartoons I could find addressing the Egyptian protests [primarily from the United States], I noticed that most of them were designed to elicit one of four reactions: joy, fear, ambivalence, or self-criticism.

Joy

Simply put, the overthrow of a dictator is a time for joy.

By Arend van Dam

The people literally become hands that drag down the flail of oppression. Though its not the best idea to bring down the flail on top of yourself.

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R.I.P. Comics Code

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On January 24, Archie Comics abandoned the Comics Code Authority, following a similar decision by DC Comics last week. The Comics Code is officially dead, though it had been dying the slow, painful death of irrelevance for some time. But way back when I was a youngster, the CCA was still a significant part of the comics industry, so I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the Code.

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Superheroes in Speedos

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[Mildly NSFW]

I spent part of my New Years weekend at my brother’s house, digging through his big box o’ comics and trying to determine which ones were mine. As it turns out, my adolescent self bought every X-Men comic ever published. And I mean all of them, even the Gambit series (and I don’t even like Gambit!). Fortunately, my embarrassment was somewhat diminished when I realized that my brother had even worst taste (lots of early Image Comics). The great find of that evening was the Marvel Swimsuit Special from 1992. Neither of us admits to buying it (I accused him, he accused me, so things go) and I don’t remember ever reading it.

Cover by Marc Silvestri

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